


Never Let Me Go

by superfluouskeys



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hawke Family Feels, Minor Fenris/Female Hawke, Pining, bethany's time in the Circle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 07:52:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11596242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/pseuds/superfluouskeys
Summary: Isabela smuggles gifts into the Circle for Bethany to find.  These odds and ends quickly become her lifeline.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Please applaud my restraint—I waited until I was finished with this entire thing before I posted it. Even though it took a Long Time and I was Very Excited about it. And definitely assaulted a few kind souls with previews they did not ask for.
> 
> Of course one of the coolest things about DA2 is how much the actual events vs Tale of the Champion vs Varric's retelling to Cassandra are up for interpretation, but perhaps worth noting is that I tend to write a mage Hawke who masquerades as a warrior/whom Varric writes as a warrior to protect her, so if there are some hints of that, it's because I didn't necessarily make a strong choice on the matter for this piece.
> 
> Anyway, thanks to rocket2saturn on tumblr for opening my eyes to the beauty of Bethabela, feeding me ideas for this fic, and generally indulging me in my neverending DA2 trashfire!

It's not so bad.

That's what she tells herself.  Repeatedly, under her breath, throughout the day and late into the night—her own personal prayer.  It's not so bad.  It could have been much worse.

Sometimes, late at night when she can't sleep, she wishes Hawke had taken her along to the Deep Roads.  Resents being left behind, a little.  Maybe a lot.

Her older sister wouldn't have let the templars take her, not in a million years, not over her dead body, that's what she'd always said.  People listen to Hawke.  One can say as he pleases about her character, but people listen to her, or they wish they had.  That's what she's always thought, anyway.  Or believed.  Or hoped.

She still can't shake the image of Marian bursting through the door, looking more than half dead, fresh from the expedition they'd begun to worry she hadn't survived, just as the templars had come to collect Bethany.  It's hard to forget seeing a face so dear to you going through such a wide range of emotions in such a short time.

But Hawke still sees Bethany as a child.  Bethany knows that.  Understands it, even.  Can sometimes bring herself to appreciate it, a little.  But not in this.  Not now that Hawke leaving her behind has led to this...this...half-life in the Circle of Magi.

She'd always thought maybe the Circles were a good thing, in their way.  Flawed, but not evil.  Mages were supposed to be safe there, to learn to control their magic in orthodox ways.  Accepted ways.  She'd thought this, privately, despite overwhelming accounts to the contrary.  Perhaps because she hoped that if she were ever caught—and this seems sort of inevitable now—that it wouldn't be so bad.

If she were ever caught.  Foolish.  Of course she was going to be caught eventually.  How could she have avoided this fate forever?

Everything, every last facet of an existence, is ruled with an iron fist here in the Circle.  You rise and fall whenever a templar wishes it, and if not a templar, then another mage who's your senior, and who ought to be sympathetic, but isn't.  Has probably gone through the same misery you're feeling right now, all day every day, and resents you simply for being younger, simply for not having lived through quite as much misery just yet.

Bethany doesn't want to think of herself as some kind of martyr.  She doesn't want to believe that they're especially hard on her, for any reason.  Because she's Fereldan, or an Amell, or because she had people protecting her for so long.  She does her best to keep her head down, to work hard, to be as close to beyond reproach as a mage can ever hope to be.  But sometimes she does wonder, does notice how closely they watch her, how very often she seems to be in trouble for some unknowable offense...

How consistently the threat of Tranquility is waved before her eyes, or held under her nose, or just barely whispered at, not quite out of earshot.

But it's not so bad, right?

* * *

 

The first time it happens, Bethany thinks it must be for someone else.

She sees something foreign, out of place, just sort of stuck in the corner where she usually sits in the evenings.  It's hardly noticeable at all except that Bethany is half-mad with boredom and frustration.  Anything out of place would have caught her interest, be it a wild nug or a speck of dust.

Briefly, she imagines a little nug running loose in the Chantry.  It's a charming idea.  She thinks Merrill would have liked it.  Or Varric, or Hawke, or...

It's just a bit of parchment, folded into the shape of a star, sticking out of a book that Bethany suddenly realizes she's never seen before.  It's not dissimilar from the books around it, just...she can remember all the titles on this shelf in order, and this book cover doesn't have a title on it at all.

She knows she ought to leave it alone.  Technically it would be best of her to report it, but she won't get any of the others in trouble just to earn herself a few stale crumbs.  If someone has managed to have something snuck in, she ought to be happy for them and leave well enough alone.

But the day has been particularly hard.  She woke up from a terrible nightmare, as she often does now—demons are drawn to this place, all filled up with frightened, half-trained mages.  She'd been too upset to eat anything at breakfast, and Enchanter Sotericus shouted at her for the better part of the hour before supper because she didn't know all the chants they were supposed to recite.

Now, in her few moments of respite before curfew, when she isn't being watched as though by a...well, when she isn't being watched so closely...she has glimpsed a little folded star of hope, of promise.  A reminder that the outside world still exists, that the possibility of another life is still out there somewhere, waiting, that she might someday...

She unfolds the little star.

_Sunshine—_

_Something to keep your mind sharp._

_—Bela._

Bethany almost cries.  She clutches the little note against her chest for just a moment, inhales deeply to steady her hands, glances over her shoulder, holds to listen closely for approaching footsteps, then takes up the book Isabela has somehow managed to send to her.

* * *

 

It's not so bad after that.  The mornings are grueling.  The days are difficult.  The nights seem endless.  But once in awhile, Bethany will spot a little something out of place, and she'll find a piece of sweet salvation in the gifts Isabela sends to her.

Mostly books.  Silly things, like lurid romance novels, with notes that say 'for research' and 'highly-respected academic text.'  Once she finds a manuscript bound together with twine.  It's unmistakeably Varric's handwriting—a rough draft of some notes for what he intends to be an account of Hawke's adventures in Kirkwall.

Bethany has to bury her face in her hands to keep from laughing out loud.  The descriptions are so florid, and the events so wildly exaggerated she doesn't recognize even a fragment of the truth in half of them.  She's always liked the way Varric describes her older sister, though—like a beloved hero.  She's well aware that not everyone is able to see Hawke that way.

 She hates to let go of the manuscript.  She hasn't even read half of it—had to skim and skip around just so she could make it to the last page—and she knows Varric would never have given it up willingly, will already have revised it four times by now.  But there's no way she can keep it.  She'll shove it back in among the other untouched books over in this corner of the library and it will have disappeared by morning, along with whatever she leaves inside it.

Just before she takes her last lingering look, though, she notices something scrawled in the margins, easily discernible from Varric's script.

 _Monday,_  
lower store room,   
after dark.

Bethany thumbs the scribble tenderly, regards the cryptic words with a little smile before she tucks her own note back into the manuscript, and the manuscript back in with the other books.  This evening, wrapped up in the world of her sister and her friends as told by Varric, would have been more than enough to get her through the week and more.  The promise of something awaiting her on Monday evening feels almost unfathomable.  What greater happiness could there be than a few pages of unedited manuscript?

_Bela—_

_Can't believe we rode here on a dragon—you'd think I'd have remembered!_

_—Sunshine_

* * *

 

Bethany senses Isabela before she hears her.  She doesn't know how else to describe it—she knows someone is here, and she knows who it is, and then she hears "Psst!"

"What are you doing?!"  She whispers back, and hurries across the little room to the drafty spot in the corner.  She cannot bring herself to stop smiling.

Isabela's hand appears from behind a carefully-placed wood plank.  She wiggles her fingers.  "Hoped I might catch you to deliver this little gift personally."

"Oh, Isabela, you shouldn't..." but the protestation trails off rather abruptly. She shouldn't, certainly, but the little odds and ends Isabela has left for her have been the only things keeping Bethany even remotely sane.

"Doing things I shouldn't is sort of my specialty, sweetness," Isabela replies.  Her hand disappears, and reappears holding a bit of tied up parchment.  "This one is from Leandra.  Didn't even know I'd been sneaking you things all along."

"I..."  Bethany wants to thank her, but can't find the words.  I want to thank you sounds so dull.  She wishes she were a writer like Varric, or a charmer like her sister, or a tortured soul like Fenris.  Then she might be able to think of some poetic way of putting it, some way of saying how...how...  "Cookies?"

"She gave me a batch, as well.  Everyone else, too.  We're all of us drowning in these things.  They're to die for, don't get me wrong, but I gather your mother takes to baking when she's worried."

Bethany is still holding the little parcel, thumbing it experimentally and trying very hard to ignore the telltale signs of impending tears.  "Baking, cleaning, taking out her anger on Marian.  Depends."

"She's doing plenty of that, too, never fear."

"Isabela..."

"Don't go all weepy on me," says Isabela lightly.  "Sorry they're not fresh out of the oven."

Bethany reaches down to the drafty space between the plank and the wall, holds her hand out into cold nothingness.  There's a moment of utter stillness, not a creak, not a breath, not even a distant night breeze.  Then, at last, Isabela takes Bethany's hand.

"I can't tell you what this means to me," Bethany whispers, in a vain attempt to hide the tremor in her voice.  "All of it.  Thank you."

Isabela squeezes her hand.  "It's nothing, sweetness.  Sweet thing like you doesn't deserve all this.  I'm just...trying to make it a little more bearable, that's all."

And because she has no more words, and because she's dreadfully close to tears, Bethany changes the subject.  "How is everyone?  Tell me..." _everything_.  "Anything."

"Thought you'd never ask."

Varric might be the resident storyteller, but Isabela has all the gossipy, catty, raunchy, terribly unflattering bits that no respectable scribe would ever commit to written memory.  Isabela says what others might let go without voicing, and that is exactly what Bethany needs now, in this place where there are no stories, no well-intentioned gossip, barely any personal lives to speak of.

Even this shouldn't exist.  This is a fluke.  Absolutely forbidden, on at least ten levels that Bethany can personally call to mind.

"Your mother is baking, so she's, you know, her usual self.  Driving Hawke half-mad, I think, like, more than usual.  And Hawke's all set on buying back the bloody mansion or whatever and setting her up with her old life, so, I dunno, guess there's some...love or caring or loyalty or something there underneath all the yelling."

"Of course there is," Bethany interjects, affronted, certainly, but also half-amused.  "She's our mother!"

Isabela's first response is a gagging noise.  "Wouldn't know.  My mother sold me for a goat and a pittance.  Anyway, your sister has found ways of dealing with the extra stress.  Took a shine to tall, dark, and glowing.  Definitely fucking, if you ask me." 

Bethany stifles a surprised giggle behind her free hand. 

"Or will be, soon enough.  Come to think of it, I guess he's had eyes for her for awhile, maybe even all along.  Can't say I'm not the least bit disappointed—I tried my hand there with no success.  Guess he's a one-woman kind of elf.  Absolutely no fun.  Merrill, bless her heart—"

"Hang on!" Bethany whispers.  She tries very hard not to process the dreadful pang of something that courses through her at the mention of Isabela _trying her hand_ with Fenris.  It can't be jealousy—certainly not—Bethany has never been jealous (well, maybe a little, sometimes, but only silly sibling quarrels, not like _that_ ) and anyway, Isabela flirts shamelessly with everyone, and has never shied away from talking about her countless lovers; why should this random comment suddenly...?  "Your mother sold you for a goat?"

"And a bit of gold," Isabela replies.  It's her usual lighthearted tone, but there's an edge to it that wasn't there before.

"How...how could she do that?"

Isabela sighs quietly, squeezes Bethany's hand.  "People do lots of shitty things for money," she replies simply.  "Anyway, if we're done dredging up ancient history, Merrill's got it in her head that she's going to piece together some ancient Elven relic and open a portal to hell, probably, so that's taking up some of her time.  Poor thing couldn't find her ass with two hands and a map, but it's weird how people like that are sometimes full of brilliantly insane ideas, isn't it?"

Isabela tells her about how mad (well, the word she used was _pissed_ ) Varric had been when he'd realized Isabela had stolen his rough draft, and how he'd instantly lost his thunder when Isabela told him why she'd taken it.  ("I expect he'll be writing something just for you now that he knows.")  She tells Bethany about the endless lecture she got herself locked into because she came to Anders with "some nasty rash I picked up from somewhere...probably that skeevy fellow from Darktown. Or was it Hightown?  Face like a rotting potato, but Maker, that body!" and was feeling sentimental to the plight of mages, all things considered.  ("Maybe you'll get lucky, sweetness, and we'll incite a full-out rebellion to break you out of here!")  She taps excitedly on Bethany's wrist as she tells of how Aveline has developed the most awkward crush on one of the guardsmen now under her command ("I don't know which one, kitten!  They all look the same, don't they?") and how Isabela has spent the past month trying to lure Varric into a bet on whether Aveline will ever get up the courage to ask him out.

Isabela talks until Bethany's head leans heavy on the loose wooden plank that separates them and she can no longer conceal her yawns.  Even in half-sleep, she clings to Isabela's hand like a lifeline, tries to commit every word, every inflection of Isabela's voice to memory.  She'll want to pore over every story, every sentence, every word in the days and weeks to come.  It's like having a little piece of her life back.  It's like she's been living outside of reality, like she's been wandering the Fade, caught up in some sad, boring sort of nightmare, and has just now been thrust back into the waking world, starving for reality, gasping for veracity.

"I hate to leave you, kitten," says Isabela quietly, after a moment's stillness.

Bethany knows the right thing to do.  She should beg Isabela to stop, beg her as she begged her grief-stricken sister not to do anything rash.  She should thank her for what she has done, tell her how she couldn't have gone on even this long without it, and then tell her it has to end.  The politics what they are in this city, Isabela would be hanged for even consorting with a mage.  For breaking into the Circle like this?  Bethany doesn't know what they'd do.  She can't bear to imagine it.

She knows the right thing to do, yet all she can bring herself to say is, "Thank you, Isabela.  I don't know how I'll ever thank you enough."

"Oh, don't be so dramatic," Isabela says with a lightness that seems, perhaps, ever so slightly thin. 

Bethany hears shuffling, then feels warm lips pressed against her knuckles.  Her heart flutters wildly.

"You can repay me with a kiss sometime, if you're of a mind," says Isabela, and then somehow she's gone, and there's not a sound, and Bethany's hand is cold, and she's barely even had time to wrap her mind around what has transpired.

* * *

Somehow, inexplicably, the months stretch into a year, and a year into several more.  Bethany goes through what they call a Harrowing and becomes a full member of the Circle.  She finds some small happiness in working with the children who are brought into the circle—most of them six or seven, but one as young as five.  She finds the courage to write letters to her family assuring them not to worry about her, that she is doing _fine_ , though she struggles to pen the word under the watchful eyes of two fully-armoured templars standing over either of her shoulders.

The real mainstay in Bethany's existence, the true lynchpin that holds Bethany steadfastly to reality, is Isabela.  Isabela continues, against all odds or reason, to leave books and notes and anything she can think of for Bethany to find, and continues, as often as she can, to visit Bethany late at night and whisper every story she can think of, all the while holding Bethany's hand tightly through the loose board in the store room wall.

It's almost agonizing.  Bethany, who has never known a dearth of affection, is positively starved for human contact.  One night, when she's starting to drift off, she confesses that she entertained the thought of kissing Isabela long before this mess, that she used to daydream about flirting boldly like Isabela so often does.

Isabela falls quiet for awhile before she says, low and rich and warm and wistful, "Dream of a day, sweetness."

Varric sends another manuscript.  This one is about a renegade mage with a heart of gold.  Bethany cries while she reads it.  Her mother sends more baked goods.  Aveline sends some weird twist-up of metal wire and dried flowers.  Isabela explains in her note that "lady man-hands" said the meaning should be obvious because it means strength and kindness and hardship or something. Merrill sends her a few curious trinkets she's picked up Maker-knows where, and even Fenris, who was rather rude to her regarding the matter of her lifelong apostasy, apparently tells Isabela to send his best wishes, "whatever those are," Isabela adds.

Conspicuously absent—though of course Bethany would never, should never have hoped for anything at all, is any word from Marian.

Bethany doesn't want to ask.  She doesn't want to appear ungrateful, or needy, or any number of other undesirable things.  She isn't even sure she wants to hear the answer to any question she might pose.  Is Hawke really okay?  Does Hawke even realize Bethany is suffering?  Does she care that her sister misses her desperately?

Is she angry with Bethany?  Is she...disappointed?  Did she not think of Bethany as a child after all, think maybe Bethany could be trusted to look after herself, to look after mother, while Marian was away in the Deep Roads?  Did she think maybe Bethany could stand to shoulder some of that burden that always seemed to fall to Marian?  The burden of caring for their mother after Father died, the burden of caring for Bethany and Carver when Mother was beside herself with grief, the burden of keeping them fed and safe and alive and laughing?

Bethany can't think on that too much.  The weight of it would crush her.

Finally, a little over three whole years since Bethany was taken to the Circle, Isabela pays her a late night visit and lets slip amid some other story that Hawke "has fucking finally begun to come back to her blighted senses and act like a human person again," and Isabela sighs heavily and explains that Marian might have been a bit more shaken by the Deep Roads expedition, and the loss of her sister, than Isabela had previously let on.

"But you shouldn't worry, sweetness.  They were all of them a little...off after they came back from that blighted trip.  Can't work out exactly what happened—not even Varric wanted to talk about it, would you believe?   But the past few days she's seemed much more herself.  I'm sure she'll be bugging me with plans to bust you out of here in no time."

"No!" Bethany manages to say, even despite an onslaught of horrible emotions, from relief to crushing guilt to betrayal.  "No, if she does, please tell her not to.  Tell her not to do anything rash.  She gets in enough trouble.  And I can't run away into the night. I can't leave mother, or put all of you in any more danger.  I shouldn't even—I should just—"

"Don't say it, kitten," Isabela warns, voice uncharacteristically stern.  "I'll ignore you.  I swear I will.  I'll ignore you and keep coming anyway."

Bethany is fighting some dreadful mixture of despair and panic.  Despair for her sister, her mother, Isabela, and all of Marian's friends who have taken so kindly to her by association.  Panic for the trouble they might get themselves into when she is fine.  Absolutely, positively _fine_.

"I can't say it," Bethany confesses, quiet as the night wind, with her forehead pressed against the dirty store room wall.  "I need you."

Isabela is dead silent for a long time after that.  The only assurance that she's heard, or that she's even still here, is her vise-grip on Bethany's hand.  Finally, so faintly Bethany can barely hear her, she says, "I won't leave you, Bethy."

* * *

Bethany wakes up cold and exhausted, in a way that's seeped so far into her bones that she hardly remembers what it's like to feel any other way.  Her throat is dry and scratchy, her eyes heavy and hard to open.  Sometimes, first thing in the morning, she feels herself losing hope.  It's only three years she's been here.  How is she ever to survive the rest of her life?

It's not so bad, she reminds herself, flatly, as she forces her legs off her bed.  She won't miss breakfast.  Can't afford to.  Wouldn't want anyone to get suspicious about why she's so tired on certain days.  She doesn't know what day of the week it is—doesn't know if Isabela has a pattern of some sort that someone might be able to see.

She must be beyond reproach.  As far beyond reproach as anyone can be with the curse of magic upon them.

As she's poking at her porridge, she thinks of a question Merrill asked her once, on one of their long walks, to pass the time.  _What would you do, if you could do anything?_

 _That's easy_ , she'd replied.  _Be normal.  No magic, just normal_.  It was all she had ever wanted, after all.  Just to be allowed to run around as Carver and Marian did, without the threat of templars and tranquility and scorn and revilement forever hanging over her head.

Merrill had poked fun at her.  _That's it?_ she'd said.  _You wouldn't fly across Thedas, or eat a cake the size of Kirkwall?  Or keep a baby gryphon for a pet?_

Bethany had often wondered what her life would be like without magic, but after that day, she thought to wonder what her life would be like if she'd been Dalish.  She spends an awful lot of time, she realizes just now, wondering what it would be like to be anyone else but herself.

The porridge is cold as the air around it, and mealy and hard to chew, but at least it's not full of mold this time.  As Bethany works on swallowing a bite or two, she wonders what her answer to Merrill's question would be now.

If she could do anything, anything at all, what would she do?

Run away?  Let her sister and friends plan a daring rescue mission, shuffle her off into the woods somewhere?  No, what life would there be for her?  And how could she leave Mother, and Marian, and...?

See her family again?  That's definitely high on the list.  But her mother worries to excess, and Marian is not exactly known for stealth unless the threat of immediate destruction is literally upon them.  Not to mention, from what Isabela has let slip, it seems like perhaps Bethany has troubled Marian enough for the time being.  She will see them again someday—of this she is absolutely certain.

Kiss Isabela?  Now there's a tempting thought.  She's practically beside herself with longing—longing for connection, for human contact of any sort, and for Isabela in particular.  She finds herself daydreaming vividly about hand-holding, and even in here, where she's well aware her mental state isn't always the soundest, she's sure that's a little batty.

She decides at last that that is what she'd wish for today.  For just a few moments alone with Isabela, without a wall between them.  She thinks maybe, if she's feeling brave, she might tell that to Isabela the next time they speak.  A flurry of vague, half-formed images flood her mind—ideas, possibilities, hopes, dreams...but Bethany barely even knows what she ought to dream of, exactly.

In the end, it comes back to their hands intertwined.  This simple image is more than enough to ignite the tiniest spark of warmth in Bethany's heart, one that far outshines the bitter cold and suffocating grey of the walls that surround her.


	2. Part Two

Somehow, impossibly, things get worse.

Bethany watches mage after mage turn to blood magic, or fall into its destructive path.  The reasons are always more or less the same.  Escape, revenge, the illusion of a little extra power.  Anyone so much as implicated in any discovery of a blood mage in the Circle is made Tranquil within a matter of days, and suddenly the halls are full of the monotonous voices and dead eyes of Bethany's friends.  She'd thought she'd long grown immune to the fear of Tranquility, but the new surge of them brings cold panic right back to the surface.

 She doesn't tell Isabela at first.  She's too afraid to even speak her fears aloud.  She guesses things on the outside must be worse than Isabela lets on, too, because Isabela doesn't visit as often, and the others stop sending things.  She's mostly quiet when they meet, and Isabela does a masterful job of filling the heavy silence with only happy or funny stories.  She keeps up the facade for nearly a year, and her efforts keep Bethany afloat in a sea of darkness that threatens to drown her every minute of every day.

One night, around four years after Bethany was taken to the Circle, there's a terrible storm.

It doesn't rain much in Kirkwall, but when it does, the thunder seems to shake the city's very foundation.  Bethany can tell something big is going on somewhere, the way the templars murmur amongst themselves, and the way they're so distracted that they're more lenient than usual.  The crashing of thunder resonates in Bethany's very bones, and she's feeling almost happy.  Isabela will come to visit tonight, and maybe she'll be able to put a name to the strange energy hanging about this wretched place today.

Bethany is so certain of her good fortune that she sneaks out of her room a little earlier than usual.  She makes her way down to the storage room with the draft in the corner and practically throws herself at it.  "Bela?" she whispers.

Isabela inhales as though to speak, but says nothing.  Instead she simply offers her hand through the opening in the wall.

Bethany takes it.  "Bela?  What's wrong?"

Isabela inhales again, squeezes Bethany's hand, exhales a shuddering sigh.

"Isabela!"

"Beth..." Isabela manages.

"What's wrong?  What's happened?  Are you all right?"

"Beth, your mother...she's..."

Bethany recoils.  Somehow she knows how the sentence will end.  Isabela's hand falls limp without Bethany's hand to hold.  Bethany feels all the air leave the room.

"She's dead, Bethy," Isabela manages at last.  "I'm...shit, I'm so sorry.  I don't know what to do.  I don't know what to say."

"Where's Marian?" Bethany almost demands.  Marian should be here.  Marian should be the one telling her this.  Whatever is going on with her, whyever she's avoiding visiting Bethany here, it shouldn't matter in the face of—

"Beth..."

"No."

"She's alive!  Hawke is still alive!" Isabela says in a rush.  "She'll be fine.  Probably.  But she's not well.  She had a run-in with...  It's been...  Maker's _balls_ , Bethy, it's been a shitstorm out here.  I'm sorry I didn't tell you any of it before, I just wanted to make you happy.  And now I have to fuck it all up in one go.  Typical me.  I'm sorry."

Something inside of Bethany is shattering, and she is struggling to hold herself together.  She takes Isabela's hand again, but she finds that she can no longer sit upright.  She curls into a ball on the storage room floor and clutches Isabela's hand like a lifeline. 

"It's too much..." she breathes.  "It's all just too much...  Mother is dead and Marian is hurt and I'm locked up in this horrid place just whiling away my days without a clue what's really happening, thinking it's such a lucky break for me because some templars are so distracted that I could leave bed a few minutes earlier than usual to come down here and not even really see you, and it's..."

She's not sure when she started crying.  She curls her face into the crook of her elbow to stifle the sound of it.  She feels Isabela withdraw her hand and she's sure she'll fall apart completely, but then the loose boards in the wall are shifting and snapping and a shadowy figure is muttering curse words and crawling on her elbows into the storage room, and Bethany feels like at the very least she might be able to breathe again. 

She practically launches herself at Isabela, and suddenly there are warm, strong arms around Bethany's shoulders, and the rough fabric of Isabela's tunic against Bethany's cheek, and it's imbued with the sinewy smell of the Hanged Man and some kind of flowery perfume Isabela likes, and Bethany wonders how everything can be so horrible and so wonderful all at once.

Bethany raises her face to catch a glimpse of Isabela, but sees only shadows upon shadows.  She pulls herself up into Isabela's lap and finds Isabela's face with her hands so that she can kiss her properly on the lips, and she thinks she would gladly lose herself in Isabela forever, given the time.

Bethany kisses her again and again, and Isabela returns her kisses with aplomb.  Isabela's hands are everywhere—in Bethany's hair, on her neck, down her back, at the dip of her waist—and she's murmuring fragments of phrases between kisses.  Finally they pause long enough for her to whisper, "Have you any idea how I've dreamed of this, sweetness?"

"I think I might," Bethany replies.

* * *

 

The next few weeks are uniquely dreadful.  Even Isabela knows they've been too reckless, and once they've fixed the hole in the wall, Bethany forces her to promise to stay away for awhile, for as long as she can.  Isabela promises that this won't be very long at all, but in the end she honours Bethany's request, perhaps a bit more thoroughly than either of them would have preferred.

Fortunately, everyone in the Circle is too distracted to notice that Bethany has been mourning the loss of her mother long before the official letter arrives.  She does her best to hide it, but there's only so much she can do.  Grief washes over her in waves, brings her to her knees in violent collisions, and sits forever both heavy and hollow in her stomach, like the emptiness inside her bears enough weight to drag her down.

She is granted leave from the Circle to attend the funeral.  She wishes she were able to fully appreciate the feeling of fresh air and sunshine on her face, or the triumph of walking down the steps that lead out of the Gallows for the first time in four years, but she spends the entirety of the journey feeling like she might be ill or faint dead away at any moment.

There are a lot of people at the funeral service.  For all her many flaws and shortcomings, Leandra Amell was well-liked and well-respected wherever she went.

Varric sets eyes on her not an instant after she enters the little room.  "Well, if it isn't the Lady Sunshine," he murmurs warmly, but she can feel him struggling not to cry as he embraces her.  Isabela appears shortly thereafter and picks Bethany up off the ground as she hugs her.  She holds Bethany's face between her hands and kisses her on the cheeks and forehead at least ten times, pulls her close again, and never quite lets go after that. 

Technically, Bethany isn't supposed to have any connections outside of the Circle.  Normally a magical child would be separated from her family as soon as her magic manifested, and all ties were meant to be severed until the child came of age, at which point said ties had usually been severed for too long for the permission to write heavily-edited letters to matter anymore.  Whoever has been assigned to watch Bethany today is being uncommonly lenient with her.

There's no sign of Marian, and her absence is so acute it's almost painful.  Despite the leniency she's being granted, Bethany knows she's being watched from somewhere, and she isn't allowed to go anywhere but directly to the funeral service and back to the Gallows.  She's always hated funerals, and she does her best to ignore the actual proceedings while still appearing reverent.  Varric and Isabela as her buffers on either side are oddly perfect for this venture, but she can't help but think how much better everything would be if Marian were here.

"How are you holding up, Sunshine?" Varric murmurs once everyone's attention is elsewhere.

"Much better now that I'm with you two," she says, and hopes he can hear how deeply she means it.  But she can't contain herself for very much longer.  "How is Hawke?"

She knows the answer by how long it takes Varric to respond.  "Not great," he confesses.  "I...sort of wish you'd gotten to see her, but honestly?" He shakes his head.  "Maybe it's for the best that you don't see her like this.  She's...not herself, let's just leave it at that.  We didn't even tell her about the funeral, let alone that you might be here."

"What happened to her?"

"Heartbreak.  Axe wound.  More heartbreak."

"Axe wound?!" Bethany's voice almost rises, but Isabela digs her fingernails into Bethany's arm, and she remembers herself.

"Don't worry, Sunshine," Varric says, patting her other arm.  "She's mostly out of the woods on the axe wound front."  _But not on the heartbreak front_ , he doesn't have to say.  "You remember the Arishok?  That whole situation kinda...escalated.  Anyway, it's not all bad.  Long story short, the problem was dealt with, one way or another, and people are calling Hawke the Champion of Kirkwall for dealing with it."

"The Champion of Kirkwall?"

"Mhm.  Not half bad for a day's work.  Kinda throws my rough draft for a loop, though."

"Maker," Bethany breathes, and feels a fresh onslaught of tears coming on.  "I wish she were here."

"Don't worry, Bethy," Isabela whispers with a squeeze of Bethany's arm.  "We'll make sure you get to see her soon."

Bethany wants to tell them about the time Leandra decided the whole family needed to go to a Chantry service.  It feels like another lifetime now.  Father was still alive, Carver and Bethany were still young enough to look near-identical but for their haircuts, and Bethany's magic had only just reared its ugly head the previous evening—no one had noticed yet apart from Mother, who'd insisted upon ignoring it and dragged them to the Chantry instead.

Marian had been a surly teenager most of the time.  She fought with Mother, Father, and Carver almost constantly, and it seemed like she only barely tolerated Bethany.  She'd recently gone through a growth spurt that left her all awkward, gangly limbs and moody disposition, and she spent the first half of the service with legs splayed and arms folded to indicate her displeasure.

Then the chanter started up on one of the 'evils of magic' bits, and Bethany was forced to face the fact that she might be afflicted with the Curse that she thought, maybe, might have shown itself the previous evening.  She thought of how disappointed Mother and Father might be, and how frightened or disgusted Carver and Marian might be.  She thought of losing all her friends, all at once or one after the other.  She worried that they would turn her into the templars, allow her to be taken away to the Circle.  She worried that she'd have to spend her whole life running as her father had done.

Around the time Bethany's thoughts had turned particularly fatalistic, Marian had cast an idle glance in her direction and immediately noticed her growing distress.  She glanced around to make sure no one else was watching her, then started performing ghastly impressions of the chanter, distorting her face and stiffening her arms, and mouthing nonsense words, until she coaxed a smile out of Bethany, and then a giggle, and then a laugh so boisterous Bethany barely stifled it.  Mother scolded Marian at least three times, but Marian spent the rest of the service mocking the chanter ceaselessly, and what might have been the worst day of Bethany's life had been made utterly bearable.  Somehow she'd known then, whatever else happened, that Marian would not abandon her.

Marian will never abandon her.  Bethany knows this in her heart.  Years of seclusion and whatever Hawke has been dealing with out here can't change that.  So she will keep telling herself until she believes it.

Bethany wants to tell the story—she thinks Varric and Isabela would love it— but even remembering it has made her cry.  Maybe another time.  Somehow, with a friendly face on either side of her and the memory of her sister's loyalty in her heart, Bethany feels the faintest shreds of hope taking root within her once more.  She feels like there could be another time, somewhere off in the future, when she might tell this story.

As the service draws to a close, the melancholy besets her once again.  She wants to go see her sister, whatever condition she's in.  She wants to go back to the Hanged Man with Varric and Isabela and choke down a disgusting drink.  She wants them to tell her more stories, about what's been happening in Kirlwall or just among their circle of strange acquaintances.  She wants to know if Merrill ever put her Elven relic together, or if Marian and Fenris ever got together, or what Varric means when he says Hawke's new title threw his first draft for a loop.

But the templar who's been assigned to watch her shows himself at last to escort her back to the Gallows, and she isn't even allowed to tell Varric or Isabela a proper goodbye.

* * *

 

For the first few months after her curse had manifested itself, Bethany had been plagued by terrible nightmares.  Usually her father came in to comfort her, and whispered secrets of his magic that she could learn to ward off demons in the Fade.  Sometimes her mother came to her bedside, but she wasn't much comfort in those days.  She mostly wept and patted Bethany's hands and muttered strange half-platitudes that didn't make much sense, and in retrospect were sometimes rather dark.

One night just after Bethany and Carver had turned eight years old, Bethany awoke to find the unmistakable silhouette of Marian sitting on the edge of her bed.  It was another rare moment, she remembered.  Marian, who'd been no more than thirteen at the time, had left home the previous week and gone who-knew-where, and she'd been getting an earful from Mother and Father all day long.  Bethany remembered being privately glad to have Marian back, but it had been more than a little selfish.  When Marian was around, she took the brunt of their parents' wrath, like a lightning rod or one of those guards who fashioned enormous shields and trained to take hit after hit without any visible damage.

When Marian was gone, all her parents' ire and resentment and wounds old and new formed a wild and unfocused storm, one that struck everyone in their path without warning or reason.

"Nightmares?" Marian had asked her.

Bethany nodded mutely.  Marian held out her arm, and Bethany took the invitation without pause.  Marian barely ever let anyone near her back then.

"They won't last forever," Marian said.  "Nothing does."

"What if they do?" Bethany pressed.  "What if I can never learn to control them and Mother and Father let the templars take me away?"

"The templars won't get you," Marian told her severely.  "Not now, not ever."

"Not ever?"

"Not in a million years.  Not in a million, billion years.  Not even over my dead body."

Bethany almost giggled.  "What are you going to do if you're dead?"

"My ghost will haunt them, obviously.  Or I'll become an abomination and drag them into the Fade and leave them there to rot.  Or I'll—"

"Stop!" Bethany cried, but she was laughing.  "You're so violent!"

"Point is," Marian ruffled Bethany's hair and shifted around so that they could share the tiny bed more comfortably, "you don't need to worry about any rusted up old templars.  They want to lay a finger on you, they'll have to take me down first."

Bethany wakes with tears on her cheeks.

She almost wishes she hadn't gone to the funeral.  She almost wishes she didn't have to remember what it was like outside the Gallows, where she could see the sunlight outside the windows and feel the warmth of people who had the freedom to care for her on either side of her.  She thought it might make things better, remembering what the real world is like, or that the real world still exists, but in the end the memory only makes the Circle seem that much worse.

Worse still, Isabela does not send her any word for several months straight.

At first, Bethany worries that something has happened to Isabela.  Later, she starts to worry that their arrangement has become too much for Isabela, and she's cutting the ties between them all at once.  Finally, almost a year after Mother's death, Bethany spots a bit of parchment that's out of place in an unmarked book in her little corner of the library.  It's almost identical to the one Isabela left her before their first meeting.

The Circle leadership has become somehow even stricter in the months that have passed, but Grand Enchanter Orsino will be patrolling the halls she needs that night.  She doubts he'll catch her if he can avoid it, and she knows at the very least he wouldn't allow her to be made Tranquil if she were caught.  Even still, she waits an extra half-hour in bed, and lingers in every corner and crevice to ascertain that she avoids detection.

"Bela?" Bethany breathes into the darkness.  It doesn't feel the same.  For an instant, Bethany is sure she's fallen into a trap.  Someone has caught Isabela, or one of the other mages, and will now catch her, and she'll be made Tranquil, and—

"Beth?"

The sound instantly brings tears to Bethany's eyes, and knocks all the wind out of her lungs, and she very nearly collapses to her knees.  "Marian!"

A hand appears from the little hole in the wall, bony and long-fingered like Bethany's own hands, and Bethany grabs it like it might disappear as soon as it's made itself known.

"Oh, Beth, it is you!" Marian sighs heavily.  "I don't know how to tell you how sorry I am, Beth.  It's...shit, it's such a mess out here, but that's no excuse.  I should have busted you out of here at least a hundred times over by now."

Bethany wants to say something, or perhaps a thousand things, but she cannot stop crying into Marian's hand.

"Don't cry, Bethany..."  But now Marian sounds like she might cry, and that makes Bethany cry harder.  "I'm going to make it up to you once this is over, I swear it."

_I'm just so happy to see you, it's not your fault, I thought something terrible had happened, I thoughtI was too much trouble, I thought you were glad to be rid of me, I thought you blamed me, I thought, I thought..._

"I thought you _hated_ me," Bethany manages, and she's not sure why that's the thought that has come bubbling to the surface, but maybe it was the prevailing one all along.

Hawke is stunned into silence for a moment, but she squeezes Bethany's hand even tighter.  "Never," she says at last, low and harsh like an oath.

"Never in a million years?" Bethany tries to tease, but she's still sniffling.

"Never in a million, billion years," Marian responds, with a severity that would have been amusing if it weren't so deeply moving.

"What's happened, Marian?" Bethany wonders, now that the greatest weight has been lifted from her chest.  "Why weren't you at Mother's funeral?  Are you all right?  Where is Isabela?"

Marian sighs heavily, but when she speaks again, she sounds a lot more like her usual self.  "Isabela has...taken a leave of absence.  Possibly related to the fact that I and several of my associates yelled at her.  Quite a bit."

"But why?" Bethany presses, even as she feels her heartbeat settling itself somewhere around her stomach.

Marian groans.  "Maker, I hate not having you around, Beth.  I don't even know where to begin, and I wish you'd been there for all of it, and I'm not even sure I've got it all straight.  One day I came home and everyone was shouting at everyone—Aveline was yelling at Isabela, and Gamlen was yelling at poor Sandal about Mother, and it...Maker, it all happened so _fast_...there was a string of murders I was looking into and there were suspects who were definitely creepy, but the pieces didn't quite fit, and then there was this horrible...thing...  Oh, Beth, it was..." Marian's voice hitches, and she goes utterly silent for a long moment.  "I'm actually rather glad you didn't have to see that," she says at last.

"Did you...were you...?" But she can't find the words.  No words for this feeling.  No words for the emptiness that has been Bethany's closest companion in the months that have passed since the funeral.

Marian squeezes her hand, but it takes her a long moment to answer.  "I was with her at the end, Beth," she says.  "That's...please, just...know that much."

 _With her at the end_.  Marian had watched as Mother...

There are no words for this, either.  Instead, Bethany simply asks, "What happened next?"

"I was half-mad after that," Marian continues, somehow quieter than before.  "But there was still Aveline and Isabela fighting.  Not like usual, like...really bad.  Some shady fellow wanted to kill Isabela because of some old relic she stole, but it turned out the relic was qunari, and it was what was keeping the Arishok in Kirkwall.  In the meantime, our friend the Arishok went batshit crazy and started taking hostages, killed a bunch of them, including the Viscount, Isabela ran off with the relic, Fenris had this batty idea that I could duel the Arishok, whose weapon of choice, by the way, is an axe twice the size of my body, and then Isabela came _back_ with the relic—when it was already much too late, I might add.  I had a gaping wound in my abdomen that Anders somehow put back together with his demonic healing nonsense, and suffice it to say, the interaction was not terribly pleasant."

"I'm so sorry, Marian..." Bethany squeezes her hand.

"No," Marian squeezes back.  "I'm sorry.  I should have come much sooner.  Nearly set the house on fire when I found out you'd been at the funeral and I'd missed you.  It seems I keep somewhat overprotective friends."

"I'm...very glad you're here now," Bethany confesses.  She knows she shouldn't, because Marian is incorrigible anyway, and she ought to be steering very clear of this place, but Maker, the past few months without a word have been hell.  Bethany had almost forgotten what it was like before Isabela started sending her letters.

"Is..." she speaks again, before she can fully process the thought, and the rest of the words fall out in a tumble.  "Is she gone for good?  Isabela?"

"Hope not.  Doubt it.  I gather she'd have given a giant middle finger to everyone else who laid into her if I'd been able to shut my fat mouth.  I gather..." she adds pointedly, "that she was not too keen on leaving your side."

"What did you say to her?"

Marian sighs.  "Does it matter?  I was an ass, let's leave it at that.  Just...I don't know what it's like, between the two of you, but...sometimes I feel like I understand Isabela very well.  Neither of us always knows how to show affection in ways that make a lot of sense.  You should know...it's obvious, how much she cares for you.  She's done a much better job of showing it than I have, anyway.  I expect she'll be back for you, if nothing else."

Bethany leans her forehead against the loose plank that separates them.   It creaks softly under the pressure.  "I missed you so much, Marian," she says.  She feels tears threatening to overtake her again, but she swallows them down hard.  She wants her sister to see her strong.  "Thank you for coming.  Thank you for telling me what's happening."

Marian scoffs.  "A fraction of it, maybe."

"So...what was it like, fighting the Arishok?  Why did Fenris put you up to it?"

A little breath of laughter escapes Marian's lips, but she sounds infinitely more exhausted when next she speaks.  Still, there's that little spark in her voice that indicates she's healing, that she'll be back to her usual self again, given time.  "Fuck if I know, honestly.  Some qunari shit.  He spent a few months with a band of qunari rebels once—did you know that?  Something about me being a respected outsider and not a woman.  It was all very insulting."

In spite of herself, Bethany laughs.

"I'll warn you in advance, though, teasing him about almost getting me killed is absolutely no fun.  Anyway, I'm sure Varric will pretty up the story for you someday, but to me it just felt like a lot of running and trying not to die immediately.  Say as you please about his methods, but he's as much a force of nature as he looks, I'll say that.  The latter half of the battle is a bit of a blur, I'm afraid, but apparently even the Knight-Commander was impressed.  Wish I'd been awake to see the look on her face!"

"You met the Knight-Commander?" Bethany asks her.

"Smug as fuck, but an impressive warrior," says Marian.  "Saved my ass when everything went to shit and we were fighting our way through the city.  Word is she's going a bit batty, though.  Convinced everyone is a blood mage and so forth."

 _That explains a lot_ , Bethany thinks, but does not say.  "There are a lot of them," she concedes.  "It's like the more the templars press, the more the mages here feel it's the only option.  I...so many of my...friends, people I knew well, or thought I did..."

Marian sighs heavily.  "It's starting to seem like something has to give eventually," she confesses after a moment.  "I just...hope you know how careful you'll have to be, in the days to come."

Now it's Bethany's turn to indulge in a heavy sigh.  "I think I have an idea," she says.  Silence hangs heavy between them for a moment, and now Bethany cannot resist but to ask, "So...you and Fenris?"

A surprised little huff of laughter from her sister lightens Bethany's heart significantly, but there is precious little lightness in Marian's voice when she speaks.  "Maker, what did Isabela tell you?"

"I don't feel comfortable repeating the language she employed," Bethany replies with mock-primness.

Marian laughs, and it's not exactly happy, but it's warm and rich and real, and for the moment, that's more than enough.  "Well, I think I did a marvelous job of fucking it up, but..." she swallows audibly.  "Well.  He's been a very dear friend to me nonetheless.  That's...more than I ever expected."

They don't talk much after that. They both know Marian should have left already, but neither can bear to say goodbye until the last possible second, and when it arrives, Bethany can no longer contain her tears, but she struggles to keep her voice even as she entreats her sister to be safe and to be well.

Marian lets go of Bethany's hand and Bethany abruptly whispers after her.  "Marian, wait!"

Her hand rematerializes.  "Hm?"

"You know..." but the words feel new and unpracticed and clumsy, and Bethany finds herself at a loss for a moment.  "You do know...you deserve...to be happy.  Right?"

Marian is silent for a moment.  She squeezes Bethany's hand one more time, and then withdraws it into the darkness once more.  "One could say the same to you, little sister."

* * *

 

The months that follow feel strange and heavy.  Bethany finds that she need no longer muster the strength to write fake letters about how well everything is going, and cannot decide whether she feels worse or better for the loss of this routine.  One of the children under her care who's no more than ten falls victim to the epidemic of blood magic and Bethany cannot keep food down for weeks thereafter.  She avoids him after he has become Tranquil, and hates herself for it, but she knows in her heart that she cannot bear it and still rise to see another day.

Hawke does her best to visit, but Bethany knows it can't last.  Now that she's the Champion of Kirkwall and a lady of some influence, it sounds like everyone in Kirkwall is vying for her time, and she can no longer skate by on the anonymity afforded to the nameless refugees they were not so long ago.  To make matters worse, it seems Knight-Commander Meredith has taken a particular interest in her and her rumoured sympathy for the plight of mages, and that can only lead to trouble in this political climate.

Hawke does manage to sneak in another scrap of Varric's manuscripts, though, and true to her intuition, he makes Marian's battle with the Arishok sound positively awe-inspiring.  At the end, instead of being unconscious and half-dead, she stands over the Arishok, triumphant, with a striking smear of blood across her nose like war paint, and sheaths her sword with a flourish as the Knight-Commander bursts through the doors.

Bethany pours over the manuscript every chance she gets, and still she almost misses it: there's a note scrawled in one of the margins, distinctive from both Marian and Varric's handwriting.

_Guess who's back!_

 When she locates the meeting time, smudged and swirled between the lines of a particularly dense passage, she realizes she's utterly lost track of the days, and she spends the rest of the afternoon attempting to reorient herself.  Not like she had any reason to care before now.  Not like the passage of days matters.

Feeling Isabela's presence again is like having something returned to her that she hadn't been able to name when it was missing.  Bethany feels strange anxiety in the pit of her stomach, entirely removed from the fear for her safety or the safety of her friends and sister.  This fear is more personal, more intimate.

"Bela?" she whispers.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you," says a voice she'd never have expected.

"Fenris?" Bethany whispers, incredulous, and hurries over to the little gap in the wall.  Such an odd thing, that this flaw in the architecture has been her lifeline for so many years now.

Fenris's unmistakeable, lyrium-marked hand appears and deposits upon the store room floor a little parcel tied with twine.  "From Isabela," he says, of the package.  Before he withdraws his hand, though, Bethany cannot help but to notice the red favour tied around his wrist--a strange habit of her sister's, to bestow favours upon those she fancies. 

Bethany takes up the package, but her words come out in a rush.  "Is she all right?  Did something happen?  Where is Hawke?"

Fenris's response is measured.  Nothing like the jumpy, agitated speech pattern she remembers.  "You recall that Isabela was in some trouble a few years back?  The man who hunts her, Castillion, was spotted in town.  She and Hawke mounted a scheme to deal with him.  It had to be done quickly, so they asked me to keep your appointment."

Bethany tugs absently at the twine on the package, but she's loath to open it too quickly.  She imagines Fenris is dying to leave as quickly as possible, and the thought of being left alone again so quickly turns Bethany's stomach.  "You agreed to sneak into the Gallows to deliver this to me?" she wonders.  "That's very sweet of you, Fenris.  And...a little unexpected."

The parcel falls open to reveal an amulet, almost indiscernible from the sorts of things they're permitted to wear when practicing certain forms of magic, except that there's a little clasp on it.

"I make no apology for my opinions on magic," Fenris replies.  There's the familiar hardness in his voice, but it's still nothing like it once was.  "Some days it seems its stain has ruined every corner of my existence beyond repair.  But I was cold to you before, undeservedly so.  You have never been cruel, nor are you weak.  You do not deserve to be shut away like this."

"Thank you," Bethany manages, but as usual, the words feel insufficient.  She's smiling into the darkness, and only belatedly realizes he cannot see it.  She's spent too long communicating only in shadows and furtive hand touches.  She wonders whether it will be an adjustment, if she ever gets to live in the real world again. 

She returns her attention to the amulet's clasp.  There's something engraved on the inside, but it's much too dark to see, and the letters don't feel familiar against the pads of her fingers.

"May I ask you something, Fenris?"

"Of course."

"What was it...like, for you...when you first ran away from Tevinter?"

Fenris is silent for a moment.  "What do you mean?"

"Perhaps I'm not sure what I mean," Bethany confesses.  "I mean, of course you must have been afraid, but beyond that.  What was it like talking with people who couldn't possibly understand what you'd been through?  Going about your daily life as though it had always been that way?"

"To be honest," says Fenris slowly, "I have been a free man for nearly a decade, and the strangeness of those things you mention has never quite left me."

Bethany remains silent, hoping he'll continue, and after a long moment, he does.

"You may never find true understanding," he says.  "Especially when all this is done...there may be no one left who understands.  But you will find...traces of it.  People who...want to understand.  Often," he adds, and there is something noticeably kinder in his tone now, or at least less hostile, "people you never would have expected."

Impulsively, Bethany holds out her hand through the little crack in the store room wall.  There is a long silence, but at last, Fenris's hand reappears in response, slow and hesitant, made visible in the near-darkness only by the faint glow of the lyrium tattooed into his skin.  Bethany gives his hand a gentle squeeze as she says, again, "Thank you, Fenris.  Thank you for delivering Isabela's parcel—" with her free hand she clutches the amulet to her heart— "and, thank you for talking with me."

She expects Fenris to retrieve his hand as soon as she lets go of it, and he surprises her again by returning the gentle squeeze.  "This will not last forever," he tells her, with enough conviction that she almost believes him.

The next morning, or more precisely, later the same morning, just before the sun is about to rise, Bethany tries again at the amulet's clasp.  The inscription is in a language Bethany doesn't recognize, and she feels her heart sink just the tiniest bit at that.  She wishes she could have asked Fenris what it meant, or if Isabela had sent any sort of message with him, or why he still wears his sister's favour if things have ended between them, or how he found the courage to run away from his former master, or if he found that the prospect of freedom after so long in captivity was ever terrifying to him, or—

The space between the halves of the amulet is not large, but in the grey morning light, Bethany can see that Isabela has somehow managed to cram a bit of folded up parchment inside.

It's folded _very_ tightly—so tightly the words are hard to read—but the dawn will come soon, and the Circle will be awake, and Bethany cannot bear to go another day without knowing what has become of Isabela.

_Thought you'd like this.  It's got some magical properties but I don't remember what they are.  The inscription is Rivaini but before you ask I barely know any.  This one means "Always near my heart" which I think is a bit more literal than I meant it but whatever.  Talk soon, kitten._

In the corner she's drawn a little heart next to her name.


	3. Part Three

For the way each day of Bethany's years in the Circle seemed to drag on endlessly, it's remarkable how quickly her little world unravels.

It begins with an explosion.

It's the middle of the night, but Bethany hasn't been able to fall asleep.  The sound shakes the Gallows' very foundation.  It's like what Bethany imagines an earthquake might be, the very earth opening up to swallow them all whole, and it seems to her that there are people screaming everywhere.  She scrambles to her feet and grabs what she can get her hands on before she bolts out of her dormitoty, but as it turns out, it doesn't matter what she does.  Whatever the explosion was, it was something bad—the templars and senior mages who patrol the halls at night are nowhere to be seen, and the other mages have already begun to run amok.

Bethany has no sooner staggered down the hallway than Isabela has appeared just behind her, as though she materialized out of thin air.  Five, ten minutes since the explosion?  And doesn't Isabela usually spend her time in—?

"Wish there were time for a proper hello, sweetness," Isabela whispers in Bethany's ear, then hoists Bethany over her shoulders and runs.

The air outside the Circle walls is bitter cold.  It's the kind of cold that slaps your face, makes it difficult to catch your breath, but Bethany gasps it in gratefully nonetheless.  Isabela deposits Bethany in a bit of an unceremonious heap in front of Hawke, Fenris, and Varric, all of whom are too distracted to notice her arrival. 

They're staring at something behind her, eyes gone dark and cold.  There's something dreadful in the air, now that Bethany has a moment to notice it—fire and ash and something Bethany cannot name, or does not wish to.  She's studying the skyline, all the buildings that look so different than they did a few years ago, and so strange and mysterious at night, illuminated by a bright waxing moon and something unnatural that hangs in the air like poisoned mana.  Something is wrong here, but Bethany is too far displaced from it to see what's been done.

Isabela returns to her side, and Bethany grasps at her arm.  "What's happened?" she pleads.

But Isabela doesn't speak.  She gestures instead to Hawke, still staring glassy-eyed into nothingness.  Though now that Bethany thinks of it, she isn't staring at the same spot as everyone else.  And now that she looks more closely, she can see that Hawke has blood on her hands, and one of them is still clutching a knife.

Bethany meets Isabela's eyes, and is momentarily lost to the world around her.  She meets Isabela's eyes, for the first time in years, really, and it's with bewilderment and this gnawing feeling of mounting terror deep in the pit of her stomach.  Isabela offers her a ghost of a smile and cups Bethany's face in her hands.  Then even that smile falls, and she gestures in the other direction.

Anders lies on the stones not a stride away from them, dead.  He's been stabbed through the heart.  Did Anders cause the explosion somehow?  Was Hawke the one who killed him?  Everyone is so quiet, everything so still but for the distant screams and the crackling of the city on fire.

"Hawke."  This from Fenris.

Then, "Bethany?"

Bethany turns to meet her sister's eyes, and suddenly the world does not seem quite so dismal anymore.  She scrambles to her feet and into Marian's proffered embrace, which quickly becomes one-armed once Marian notices she is still clutching her knife.

"Thank the Maker," Marian breathes, then adds, in an attempt at lightness that comes out sharp and thin as a blade, "I find myself in need of another mage."

"What's happening, Marian?" Bethany finds herself pleading, again and again and again, but even her sister cannot bring herself to speak of whatever has transpired here tonight, and at last Bethany pulls away, pulls herself away from the lot of them, and demands an answer.  "Please," she says, with as much authority as she has ever mustered.  "Will someone tell me what is going on?"

Before her she sees the faces of people who love her.  These people, who came to care for her because they cared for her sister, love her so gently that they wish to shield her from the world in which she must live.  Isabela, who so kindly offered her a window out of her solitude, left out all the unpleasant details.  Varric, who so kindly wrote just for her, to lift her spirits, dressed up the stories to be better and happier than they were, sometimes by far; sometimes so much that the truth of them would be unrecognizable.  Marian, who would cross oceans and slaughter masses just to protect Bethany, loved her so dearly that she left her behind to be captured in her absence.

"What is it you think of me?" she demands, quiet and tremulous.  "You think I am weak?  You think I am too soft, too gentle to handle the truth?"  She shakes her head, feels the bitter cold air burning in her lungs as she inhales.  "Do you know what I have endured because you thought I was too soft and gentle and weak to come along with you?"

She sees the sting of guilt in Marian's eyes, and feels a pang of remorse in her heart.

"I know you want to protect me," she says, to her sister, and to each of her sister's friends.  "And I do appreciate the thought.  Sometimes I needed protecting.  Sometimes everyone needs protecting.  But if everyone else is always protecting me, how can I ever protect myself?"

Isabela steps forward and takes Bethany's hands as she speaks.  Her voice is almost hoarse.  "The Knight-Commander and the Grand Enchanter were having one of their signature terrible arguments.  Around that time, Anders-plus-Justice started monologueing like a crazy person, and the Chantry went up in flames.  Meredith..." Isabela averts her eyes.

It is Fenris who finishes the thought.  "The Knight-Commander ordered the Right of Annulment.  She also ordered that Hawke support her."

In a cataclysmic contradiction, Bethany's eyes fall to Marian, wide and searching, that old fear from half a lifetime ago as fresh as though her magic had only shown itself yesterday evening.  She realizes in this moment, just as certainly as she knows Marian would never abandon her, that she has been waiting for this betrayal all along.  Ever since that horrible, horrible morning in the Chantry service, Bethany has been waiting for the day Hawke stops fighting for her.  The day she realizes it's too much trouble and turns her back on Bethany once and for all, as all good non-mages are meant to do.

But Hawke is taken aback by the unspoken question in Bethany's eyes, and she shakes her head severely.  "Never," she says.  "Never in a million, billion years.  Not even over...well."  She approaches at last, but the strange, hazy darkness of the evening's events still hang heavy around her.  "Anyway, it's going to be one hell of a battle," she continues, and claps a bloody hand on Bethany's shoulder.  "I've regretted it every day, Beth, leaving you behind.  Maybe if I hadn't..."

"Maybe if you hadn't," Bethany stops her, "something worse would have happened.  I'm here now.  And I've always got your back."  She inclines her head.  "Just like you've always had mine."

Hawke awards her a lopsided smile, thinks to pat her on the cheek, and then stops when she remembers the blood on her hands.  Instead she takes her thumb and smears blood across Bethany's nose, the same way she always does to herself, like war paint.  It serves two purposes, she'd explained once: to others, a warning; to yourself, a reminder.

Isabela reappears then, looking more than a little self-satisfied, and presents Bethany with an ornately-carved staff, much better than the one the Circle allows her.  Bethany holds out her hands hesitantly, almost afraid to touch such a magnificent thing.  She tears her eyes away from the staff to look at Isabela in silent question _.  Is this really for me?_

Isabela inclines her head wryly.  "One good thing about killing people," she says with a shrug.  "You get their stuff."

The battle is...terrifying.  Gruesome.  Haunting.  Bethany thinks vaguely that Varric will find better words for it sometime, if they make it out alive.  It feels like they won't...several times.  Bethany has seldom known the threat of imminent death before this night.

Grand Enchanter Orsino turns to blood magic and they have to take him down.  It's...really awful.  He's one of the few senior mages who have been truly kind to her in her time in the Circle.  It's not a grand, dramatic thing, either.  Nothing like the sort of thing Varric always cooks up after the fact.  The Grand Enchanter starts raving; raving about the injustice of it, no less, and Bethany understands it, but it's too much, now that he's offered the spirits something.  His blood sings to the shadows that lurk at the edge of the Veil.  Bethany can feel them.  She can hear them calling to him, and calling to her in turn.

And then he is gone, and there is only Meredith.  She, too, is much more complicated than Bethany imagines she will appear when this story is regaled.  But in the end it's all the same.  The spirits singing to her, pressing against the Veil, and she cannot resist them, because there is too much she wants, too much she feels she needs.

Meredith is no mage, though, and this is no demonic possession.  Whatever she has used to augment her formidable skill burns her up from the inside out, and she screams the entire time.

Hawke falls to her knees before the Knight-Commander.  She holds Meredith's hands while she dies, until nothing remains but a smouldering shell of a person, and then she hangs her head and weeps, and no one, not even Bethany, dares approach her.

In defiance of the cold autumn night, the city of Kirkwall burns around them.  Everything smells like ash and dust and death.

* * *

 

"We have to leave."

These are the first words Hawke speaks after the battle has ended.  For all Bethany knows, hours could have passed in utter stillness.

Both Fenris and Varric offer their hands to her, but she ignores both of them and staggers to her feet unassisted.  "They'll send..it won't be...we can't be here."

A brief and decidedly half-hearted argument ensues.  Everyone knows she's right, but no one will admit it straight away.  Aveline and Varric have a life in Kirkwall, commitments they cannot abandon, yet it's clear a part of each of them would love to continue following Hawke into the abyss, like she's some kind of ancient hero leading them blindly into the next great adventure.  Merrill, too, has unfinished business in the alienage, and she is loath to abandon her work now, when she feels she is close to a breakthrough.

Fenris and Bethany do not argue.  They both know there is little life to be had for them here after all this.  Fenris nods firmly, asserts that he will remain at Hawke's side no matter where she leads.  Bethany agrees wholeheartedly, and adds, "I think a new start will be good for all of us."  She turns to Isabela, and finds her looking more than a little lost.

Her dark eyes hold starlight in them.  The reflection of the little bits of ash floating down from the fires on the rooftops look almost beautiful through the filter of Isabela's eyes.  But she's glancing warily between Hawke and Bethany, like she's not sure what she's meant to do.

"Won't you come with us?" Bethany prods, stepping forward hesitantly.

"I..."  There's a hazy smile starting to form at the corners of Isabela's lips, and she steps forward to meet Bethany with hands outstretched.  When Bethany takes her hands, the smile widens, and the usual spark returns to her in a flash.  "Right.  Of course.  When do we leave?  Where do we go?'

"Morning," murmurs Hawke, who is doing a very poor job of pretending that she isn't leaning heavily upon both Fenris and Varric for support.  "We'll leave before dawn.  Plenty of time.  Need a bit of..." she waves her hand vaguely.

"Rest?" Fenris offers drily.

"Packing," she counters.

Varric demands they all spend one more night crowded into the Hanged Man, and in all honesty, Bethany could not be more pleased by the choice.  The place is just as disgusting as she remembers it, but it's familiar.  It's got a lot of Kirkwall in it, the spirit of the city or something, and Bethany finds that that is what she wishes to remember of this place, far more than the chains for which it is better known or the chaos that has reigned here these past few years.

Varric and Hawke climb up onto the roof of the building, each balancing an ale in one hand, to say a proper goodbye.  Aveline, Fenris, and Merrill share a series of strange conversations, the likes of which Bethany has missed so desperately that, she realizes at one point, her enthusiasm for the exchanges has significantly dulled the tension that might otherwise exist between them after such a tumultuous evening.

Isabela makes herself scarce for the first hour or so.  She appears and disappears, seemingly from different nooks and doorways each time, and when pressed, mutters something about packing.  At one point, though, so casually that no one else seems to pay it much mind, she tugs at Bethany's hands and tells her she's got so many things to show her since she's been away.

Bethany has never been into Isabela's room, but she's fairly certain it's the same one Isabela has kept in all her time in Kirkwall, just like the room Varric claimed for himself who knows how long ago.  Isabela closes the door behind them as they enter, and Bethany surveys the little space a moment.  Messy.  Sparse.  But somehow still decidedly Isabela's.

Bethany turns around to find Isabela leaning suggestively upon the doorframe, waiting for her attention.  Suddenly she feels...almost nervous.  She thinks of how she felt before, dreaming of being bold and flirtatious when all she's ever known are tentative hand touches and a handful of stolen kisses, and she wonders suddenly whether she ever truly believed she'd find herself here, free, and with Isabela standing before her, waiting for whatever she might do.

Bethany takes a tentative step forward.  "I'm glad you came back," she says quietly.

The hand that isn't supporting Isabela against the doorframe finds Bethany's cheek, then lightly pinches her chin.  "What, you thought I'd leave you trapped in that dreadful place forever, kitten?" she shakes her head.  "You'll have to send me away in chains if you want to be rid of me now."

Bethany feels a strange, dizzying kind of warmth starting up somewhere in the pit of her stomach, and the sensation causes a small smile to tug at the corners of her lips.  She closes the distance between them in a rush, wraps her arms about Isabela's shoulders and pulls her off her balance and into a kiss.

"Now who's being dramatic?" she teases, but the effect is somewhat lost in her breathless wonderment.  "Tell me--everything--" she breathes against Isabela's lips in the spaces between kisses.  "Tell me what I missed.  I'm so--" another kiss, long and deep-- "tired of missing everything."

Isabela laughs against Bethany's lips and runs her fingers through Bethany's hair as she kisses her nose.  "Finally got to watch the fuck who's been hounding me for nearly a decade bleed out, that's what you missed."

"I heard you and Hawke had a fight," says Bethany.

Isabela waves one hand dismissively.  "Ancient history," she deflects lightly, but when Bethany gives her a pointed look, she amends, "Well, perhaps it was a little heated.  But the whole relic disaster was sort of my fault, and she made up for yelling at me by saving my ass, so it all worked out in the end, didn't it?"

It's such an odd thing, but the phrase _saving my ass_ reminds Bethany of what Marian had said to her about the Knight-Commander, and she's suddenly overcome by the image of Hawke weeping at Meredith's side while she burned alive.  She swallows, hard.  "I suppose a happy ending to this mess would have been too much to hope for," she says, slowly.  "But still...it's been...what a dreadful night."

Isabela smoothes Bethany's hair away from her face and kisses her forehead, her cheeks, her nose, and then finally, her lips.  "There now," she says, "the night is young.  You never know, it could improve vastly in the next half-hour or so."

Bethany feels a very different sort of thrill course through her veins--different than anxiety, different than fear, different even than the thrill of magic and all the many emotions it stirs.  She smiles, and pulls herself more closely against Isabela's body, relishes the feeling of really being here, not crouched in some drafty store room clutching at shadows and distant promises.

"Or in the next few minutes," Isabela amends sweetly, trailing her fingers over various seams on the tattered remains of Bethany's Circle robes.  "I'm not picky."

"You know," says Bethany, as coy as one can be when one is over and over again rendered nearly breathless, "I'm not particularly attached to these robes."

A grin, equal parts wickedness and delight, crosses Isabela's lips then, and Bethany feels that anxious-nervous-excited-magical tingling surge through her veins once more.  "You don't have to tell me twice, kitten," says Isabela.

* * *

 

Bethany isn't sure when she falls asleep.  She awakens groggy and disoriented, but so deliciously warm she feels she must be dreaming, and that thought rouses her enough to jolt her awake.  Surely this comfort, this divine happiness, must be some trick of the Fade meaning to tempt her, turn her into yet another abomination for the Knight-Commander to strike down, but no!  No, Bethany will stay strong!  She will not long for---

Her abrupt departure from the bed rouses Isabela, but only enough to stretch and yawn.  Bethany is left floundering on the side of the bed, suddenly very aware that she is naked and no longer quite so warm or comfortable, and it takes her several minutes to convince herself that this is definitely, definitely not a dream.

The sun hasn't risen yet, but there's that greyish tinge filtering through the window of Isabela's room that suggests morning can't be far away.  She can't have been asleep more than a few hours.  They'll have to leave soon.

Bethany's head sinks into her hands.  Everything that happened the previous night was real.  Her unceremonious escape from the Gallows, the battle through a city gone mad, the Knight-Commander's gruesome end, the way her sister wept at Meredith's side, the way Isabela looked at her, touched her, held her...

There's a gentle knock on the door.  "Isabela?'  It's Hawke's voice.  "Is Bethany with you?  We need to move out soon."

"I'm here," says Bethany, more to herself than in response to her sister.  Then, louder, and scrambling to her feet, "I'm here!  I'm--we're coming."

"Wasn't looking for details, but congratulations," Hawke quips lightly, followed by the sound of her footsteps on the stairs. 

Bethany covers her face to stifle her sudden giggle then, equal parts giddiness and embarrassment and disbelief.  Everything that happened last night was real.  This...the bad, yes, but also the good...this is all so _real_.

Bethany has no possessions left to her name besides the robes she left the Circle with, but those wouldn't do even if they weren't more than a little damaged in the previous evening's festivities.  She borrows a couple of tunics and pairs of trousers from Isabela, scrounges together a few odds and ends that might be useful on the road, and makes her way downstairs cradling a little satchel, feeling all at once so very different from the person she was when she staggered into this city, and also very much the same.

Varric, Aveline, and Merrill haven't quite released their hold on Hawke yet.  None of them looks as though they've slept at all.  They're all sort of huddled around her, Varric's arm slung over her shoulder, Aveline holding one of her hands, Merrill idly clutching the fabric of her tunic, which looks oversized and stitched together.  Hawke has slicked back her hair and it makes her face look completely different, which is likely what she was going for.

Isabela, too, has foregone her usual sparkling assemblage of jewelry and her signature bandana and has tied her hair back simply instead.  She descends the steps of the Hanged Man positively glowing in the early light of morning, and Bethany thinks to herself that perhaps being on the run won't be so bad at all.  She has her sister back, she has her freedom, and she has Isabela.  That's...

Well, it's far more than Bethany could ever have dreamed of, to be certain.

Bethany averts her eyes almost shyly, and gets caught up in watching the gathering around her sister again.  She feels Isabela's arm sliding into the crook of her elbow before she's even heard her grow near, and she's starting to feel like everything is just a very strange dream again, but Isabela is so warm and so real beside her, and when she says, "Ready, sweetness?" into Bethany's ear, Bethany cannot help but to smile just a little bit.

Hawke finally manages to stand, and her friends follow.  She hugs and kisses each of her remaining companions fiercely before she turns her back upon them with a sort of twitchy determination and lays her hand upon the front door of the Hanged Man.  Fenris falls into step behind her and lays his hand atop hers, and Bethany isn't sure whether it is he who pushes the door open in the end, or whether his touch gives Hawke the strength to do it herself.

Bethany breaks away from Isabela to hug each of them, too, these friends of her sister who have become friends of hers.  Merrill offers her a Dalish blessing for travelers, Aveline pats her shoulder firmly and tells her to be careful out there, and Varric squeezes her tightly and calls her Sunshine and tells her not to be a stranger.

She wishes she'd had more time to know them.  She wishes she'd had endless nights spent in this old place, drinking too much and getting too close.  But then again, perhaps Bethany is a little bit lucky in this way, for all her recent sorrows.  The people who matter most to her in this world are right by her side this morning, and perhaps that is why she is able to hold her head so high as they travel together, arm in arm, into the next great unknown.


End file.
